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Exhibition in Poland showcases work of Auschwitz prisoners

The Nazis sometimes ordered talented inmates to make paintings for various purposes. Some of those works are now on display for the first time.

The original top of the "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Works Sets You Free) gate of the Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz, that was made by the early inmates, is on display in Poland. (Bartosz Bartyzel / The Associated Press)

A model of a plan the German Nazis were making for the enlargement of the Auschwitz death camp, shown here on display at the "Face to Face. Art in Auschwitz" exhibition. (Bartosz Bartyzel / The Associated Press)

By The Associated Press

Wed., July 12, 2017

WARSAW, POLAND—A new exhibition in southern Poland shows the brutality of the Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz through the artistic work of its inmates. Some of the artworks are being shown publicly for the first time.

The Face to Face: Art in Auschwitz exhibition opened last week at the Kamienica Szolayskich (Szolayski Tenement House) of the National Museum in Krakow to mark 70 years of the Auschwitz Museum. The museum’s task is to preserve the site in the southern town of Oswiecim and to educate visitors about it. More than 2 million people visited the museum last year.

The curator of the Krakow exhibit, Agnieszka Sieradzka, said Wednesday it includes clandestine as well as commissioned drawings and paintings by Jews, Poles and other citizens held at Auschwitz during World War II.

“These works help us see Auschwitz as the inmates saw it and experienced it,” Sieradzka told The Associated Press. “We stand face to face with the inmates.”

The Nazis sometimes ordered talented inmates to make paintings for various purposes. One such painting is a portrait of a Roma woman that pseudoscientist Josef Mengele experimented on. Mengele ordered portraits like this from inmate painter Dina Gottliebova, a Jewish woman from Czechoslovakia.

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A portrait of a young Roma woman, an inmate of the Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz, one of those on whom pseudo-scientist Josef Mengele was doing experiments. Mengele commissioned another inmate, Dina Gottliebova, a Jew from Czechoslovakia, to paint people he was experimenting on. (Bartosz Bartyzel)

The task helped Gottliebova survive. After the war she travelled to the U.S. and started a family. She died in 2009 in California under the name Dina Babbitt.

Among the clandestine art is the so-called Auschwitz Sketchbook by an unknown author. It has 22 drawings of scenes of beatings, starvation and death. It was found in 1947, hidden in a bottle in the foundation of a barrack at Birkenau, a part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. It is the first time it is being shown to the general public. It is housed at the museum and only shown on request.

Also being displayed is the original “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Sets You Free) gate top that was stolen and retrieved in 2009 and is now kept under guard at the museum.

A pencil sketch by unknown inmate of the Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz showing the arrival of a transport of Jews, guarded by armed German soldiers. It is a page from the so-called Auschwitz Sketchbook that was found after World War II and is now on display at a "Face to Face. Art in Auschwitz" exhibition. (Bartosz Bartyzel)

From 1940-1945, some 1.1 million people, mostly European Jews but also Poles, Roma and Russians, were killed in the gas chambers or died from starvation, excessive forced labour and disease at Auschwitz, which Nazi Germany operated in occupied Poland.

A "double portrait" by Peter Edel, a Jew from Germany, shows him before Auschwitz, right, and as an inmate of the death camp and asking "Is this still me? (Bartosz Bartyzel)

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